


Splittings

by rollsofrice



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Post-Series, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 02:43:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10323800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rollsofrice/pseuds/rollsofrice
Summary: The truth was, there was no way he could be tired: he had already gone through every emotion to its very end.





	

The truth was, there was no way he could be tired: he had already gone through every emotion to its very end.

At the end of every one was a tall, endless wall the color of ice. He had pressed his finger to it – it was as warm as he was – and gone back the way he came.

It had been this way since – forever, he supposed. Years, years. He barely remembered any more. There was his junior debut, there had been the Russian nationals in between, his senior debut, Sochi, gold, gold, a misstep, gold, gold, and he hardly knew after that. Probably it was the present, and he was right where he was supposed to be.

“Vitya!”

Oh. And here he was. The quad flip. Again. He drove his pick into the ice, spun dutifully, and landed.

“You’re not listening,” Yakov says, grumbles about his entry. He nods, moves, does it again.

Unlacing his skates, later, he looks up to see Yakov standing in the doorway. “Don’t make me pick your free program music for you,” Yakov says, then: “End of the week. We don’t have time for this.”

“You haven’t picked my music for me since I was sixteen,” he says. It had felt important then, the choosing, and he’d preferred to defer to someone who knew best. He puts his shoes on and stands. “I always make it in time.”

“In time for you is too late for everyone else!”

“I said I was sorry about Sochi.” He isn’t sorry about Sochi.

Yakov grunts. He leaves.

Viktor listens to the sound of the zamboni moving, imagines it trailing behind him as he skates, erasing the long white lines he makes in the ice. It’ll never catch up to him, of course, but the image pleases him. Perhaps a modern-art exhibition skate, a commentary on the transience of the whole thing; he laughs. Yakov will have a conniption.

He spends the trip home thumbing idly through his playlist, unable to listen to any song in full. None of them feel right. He pictures the ice, that sheer sharp sound his right skate makes, the bruise on his left hipbone.

He skips to the next song.

* * *

In his apartment the lights were turned on, and so was the heat. He stood in the warm hallway and marveled: there were shoes on the rack not in his size. Things had moved in the house and he had not moved them. Yuuri had bought groceries, had unpacked them scrupulously. Had he even used the fridge’s egg tray, before this? Wonder after wonder. He heard a splashing in the bathroom, saw a light under the door, called out: “Yuuri!”

“You’re back!”

“You bought milk.”

“You make it sound like I brought you food to feed a whole army,” Yuuri laughs. “Door’s not locked.”

“Are you hungry?” In his current state, Viktor is certain he could do anything, might even discover a sudden miraculous knack for cooking. Anything, for the man who had brought him full-cream milk and fusilli.

“Viktor,” Yuuri sighs.

He’s at the bathroom door before he’s aware of having taken a step forward, is twisting the knob, has his shirt pulled over his head. The bath is too small, of course, but he could – he trips over the mat, steadies himself on the lip of the tub. He keeps his sweatpants on.

“Eager,” Yuuri says. He’s smiling; his hand is warm and wrinkled from the bath. “The water’s getting cold, if you want to I’ll –”

“Stay,” Viktor tells him. “I showered at the rink.” He puts his hands in the water, gently squeezes Yuuri’s big toe.

Yuuri favors him with an indulgent head-shake, and reaches down to pull the bath plug out. He goes pliant, lets Viktor dry him off and dress him. There’s a damp spot soaking through the t-shirt he missed with with the towel, but Yuuri doesn’t seem to mind. He yawns.

“Makkachin’s already in bed,” Yuuri says.

In fact he’s sprawled over the bottom half of the mattress, snoring. Viktor’s toes push up against the solid lump of dog and he has to bend his knees to fit under the covers. Yuuri laughs at him, yawns again, and presses _his_ toes (cold) into Viktor’s bare shin. Viktor yelps and kisses him. How fortunate he is, to pick someone else’s hair off his pillows in the morning.

“Makkachin sheds too,” Yuuri murmurs, half-asleep, and Viktor realizes he’s said it aloud.

“I love you,” he tells Yuuri solemnly, “even if you ruin my romantic metaphors.”

“Set the alarm?” Yuuri says.

He does: 5:00am. How lucky he is, he thinks, to have any of this at all. He wants to remember that tomorrow morning, when it’s time to start again. His hip aches, but he’ll wake up with Yuuri’s hair in his mouth, his hands pressed over Yuuri’s ribs. Of course Yuuri loves him; of course he has to go on being what Yuuri loves. Effortless.

“Goodnight,” Yuuri says, and arches into him, briefly, before settling. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he agrees.

* * *

Privately, he’s done the math: there’s no one who can come close to beating his program this season. Publicly no doubt the same math has been done, since the press, as usual, is beating a path to every door he finds himself ushered through. He thinks they must have played some perverse game of Chinese whispers to find the uniquely foolish combination of questions they’re throwing at him today, the wrong permutations of almost-right words.   

> _how confident_ _are you of getting_
> 
> _this season_ _your competitors_
> 
> _returning to the ice_
> 
> _why_ _are you_
> 
> _has leaving / changed_ _anything_
> 
> _has returning / been difficult_

“My theme this season,” he says, “is opposites. Contrasts.”

He says, “Thank you for your continued support.”

“I am,” he says, “ready for the season after my time away from the ice.”

“Are you afraid that you’ll be forgotten?”

Viktor blinks: where was – oh. Here. Yakov, telling him to go easy on the quads in the second half, _fool_. He bends to tighten his laces, hands cold.

“Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll forget what I want.”

“Speak up! I thought I cured you of your mumbling years ago!”

“No,” he says. “How could they ever forget me?”

Yakov scoffs. Or snorts, possibly. Viktor hadn’t been listening for the difference.

“A couple of gold medals and this one’s head is up his ass,” Yakov is saying.

Viktor does a spiteful triple axel, underrotates it. He still hasn’t chosen his music.

* * *

Their one day off that week, he convinces Yuuri to stay in. Yuuri wants to see the city, but they’re both bruised and sore from training, and neither of them feels up to walking.

“Anyway, we’ve got time! You’re training here for the rest of the season.” Viktor’s frying eggs; Yuuri let him. He’s being careful – besides, any idiot knows the smell of burning. He won’t let it get that far.

“I wish it were warm enough to run outdoors,” Yuuri says.

“It might be, soon,” Viktor returns, frowning at the egg. He flips it over; it’s still runny in the middle. He turns it again.

“You have to wait,” Yuuri says, and Viktor blinks, confused for a moment – that was _his_ next line, he thought, in this conversation, that’s where it was heading. “The egg.” _Oh_. He puts the spatula down, turns the fire up. He forgets what he has to say.

When he’s finally done with the eggs they bring the food on plates to the table. There is only one clean fork – he’d used the other to whisk the eggs – so they share it. Yuuri takes a bite and politely doesn’t comment. Viktor takes the fork from him, swallows, then laughs.

“I’m sorry, _god_ , wow, that is – Yuuri, spit it out! We’ll order something.” He’s sorry to have wasted two of the eggs, but that couldn’t be helped now.

Yuuri chews and swallows. “It’s okay,” he says, then leans over, teases: “Mari-nee-chan used to talk me into doing chores by saying it would be good practice for when I had to serve the great Viktor Nikiforov.”

Viktor, delighted: “And it worked?”

“She said you wouldn’t even own a vacuum cleaner. She made me sweep the floors instead, but really she just didn’t want me dragging the vacuum over the wood and scratching it.”

Viktor laughs. “And how is serving the great Viktor Nikiforov working out for you?”

He means it lightly, teasing, but Yuuri smirks, curls a hand around his wrist. Says, voice low, “Oh, I don’t know, he seems rather intent on serving _me_.”

Viktor’s attention – and fickle, fickle blood flow – are rather significantly diverted after that. Before he manages to suggest they decamp to the couch, Yuuri says, “I’ve a better idea.” Viktor spends the next seven minutes on his knees, light-headed, Yuuri’s cock in his mouth.

“Oh, oh my god,” Yuuri gasps, and then he’s bending down to kiss him, his hands tugging at his hair.

He comes with his sweatpants still around his ankles, Yuuri’s delightful mouth sucking a bruise into his neck.

Barely a minute later, Yuuri glances over at him and immediately flushes all the way to his ears. Yuuri’s hand goes up to his own neck, a mirror. “Oh, I’m – sorry! I didn’t think, will it show?” Not at their short programs, Viktor thinks regretfully. Those are a full month away, and Yuuri only knows too well how long bruises take to fade. He means tomorrow, at practice.

“Nothing concealer can’t hide,” he says. On the off chance he decides to use it.

“Right,” Yuuri says unsteadily. “Sorry.”

“It’s just too bad we don’t match,” he continues, and runs a finger over Yuuri’s lower lip. “Then there’d be no need for concealer.”

 _That_ raises, impossibly, another deeper blush. Then Yuuri leans forward, adjusting his glasses, and says, “It’s your fault we don’t match.”

They don’t leave the apartment that day. Yuuri cooks the last of their eggs.

* * *

The collar on his training jacket doesn’t go high enough; he hadn’t realised. In fact he hadn’t thought about it at all until Yuri had skated up to him, snorted, said “I don’t want to know about it. Disgusting!” and skated away. He’d been looking straight at his neck, so Viktor checks himself the mirror the next chance he gets – almost an hour later.

He’s got a smudge on his face, too, so he rubs that away first, then examines the one on his neck. That one can’t be removed with friction, but he circles his fingers idly around it anyway, feeling the heat gather on his skin.

Georgi comes up behind him, glances at him, and says, “Ah.”

“You used to come into practice with five of these on you all the time, don’t even start.”

An indignant sputter. “I was – she _bewitched me_! I –”

He isn’t in the mood for another one of those conversations; he’d done his due, sitting in a terrible bar for six hours while Georgi drank too much, badly, and cried. “Do you have concealer?”

“Not in your shad – fine,” Georgi snaps, then breaks, on the receiving end of a particularly unsympathetic glare. “Don’t get the wand dirty.”

It’s good concealer, at least. Georgi knows his makeup. Viktor spreads it over the mark and taps gently – Georgi turns out to be right about the shade, but the lighting in the rink is abysmal. No one will notice.

Yuri gives him a vicious once-over when he goes back on the ice. “Late night?”

“It was this morning, actually,” Viktor tells him coolly.

Yuri sputters. It sounds gratifyingly like Georgi’s. “I said I didn’t want to know!”

Viktor smirks. “Well, I’ve covered it up now, so you won’t be uncomfortable looking at it. Happy? How’s your quad Salchow?”

“Perfect, old man,” Yuri says, and does it once, carelessly, as if he would have done it anyway. He two-foots the landing.

“Nearly there,” Viktor says. “I’m happy to coach you privately.”

Yuri skates backwards while giving him the finger.

* * *

Yuuri sweeps the Japanese nationals, as he should.

Viktor watches on a flickering feed that goes out barely a minute after Yuuri stumbles off the ice, exhausted from his short program. He spends the rest of the time refreshing the page, restarting the modem. He gives up, in the end, and calls Yuuri.

“Viktor!”

“You were amazing! They better have given you a +3 GOE on all those jumps, or they’re blind.”

Yuuri laughs. Viktor presses the phone hard against his ear. “I’m in first place.”

“Of course you are! The feed cut out, I managed to see your short program but not the kiss and cry.”

“There wasn’t any kissing or crying,” Yuuri says; he sounds wistful.

“You brought Makka, right,” Viktor says. The real Makkachin’s curled in his lap, half-asleep, but he imagines Yuuri holding his tissue box and feels better. Only maybe still a little angry he won’t be there for the inevitable post-skate cry.

“Yeah,” Yuuri breathes. The line crackles. “I miss you.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,” Viktor says. He swallows once, hard.

“No, it’s fine! That’s not what I meant – don’t be ridiculous! You still have your nationals, I meant –” Viktor closes his eyes, smiles, at Yuuri’s minor outburst, the most words he’s heard him speak in two days. There’s a silence on the other end of the line, then: “Viktor?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he says. He massages his hip lightly, adjusts the bag of ice he’s balanced on it. Makkachin sticks out her tongue to lick the compress, yelps, and noses at Viktor’s ankle. “Fine. I’ve chosen my music.”

“Oh.” He can hear Yuuri’s relief, even through the patchy connection. “Good! I – send it to me? If you want to.”

“Yeah, of course,” Viktor says. He taps an idle line down Makkachin’s back; she whines.

Yuuri’s taking a deep breath on the other side of the line. “Do you really want this?”

“What?”

“To come back.”

His left hand instinctively jerks up to his right, goes to the reinforcing weight of the ring. “Yes, of course! I said I wanted to. I just – it’s been a tough week. Yakov is angry with me again about the music. He talked to you?”

“Yeah, he texted me. Said good luck for the nationals, too.” Another pause. Viktor doesn’t like this; he wants to see Yuuri’s face, to know what each silence means instead of just _waiting_ for the words to come. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Viktor bites out through a closed-mouth smile. Yuuri can hear when he’s smiling, he knows.

“Okay,” Yuuri says, still uncertain. “I have to go now, they want an interview. I’ll call you when I’m back?”

“Skype?” He needs to see, he thinks. His fingers tighten around his phone.

“Okay!” Yuuri’s attempting cheerfulness now. He must sound terrible; that has to be fixed. “It’ll be tomorrow for you, right?”

“Tomorrow,” Viktor agrees. He waits for Yuuri to hang up, is left absently listening to the dial tone.

He ends up falling asleep on the couch, the bag of ice melting into a lukewarm patch of water. 

* * *

When Viktor finally chooses his music, Yakov seems overcome with (first, inevitably) irritation, and then relief.

“Here,” he says gruffly, and pulls at the cord of Viktor’s earphones. “Let me listen, you go warm up. Stop Yura from doing any jumps.”

He does. Yuri doesn’t appreciate any of it. He complies – doesn’t even do singles – but skates figures grimly around the rink, an angrier turn on the edge of each successive figure.

“It’s just a warm up,” Viktor reminds him.

“He limits the number of jumps I do,” Yuri complains. “The whole day!”

Viktor thinks about his knee surgery a year ago, the now near-constant ache in his hip. “You’ll thank him later.”

“How am I supposed to land any quads like this?” Yuri demands.

“It’s not all about the jumps, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, the presentation score. Whatever. I need the jumps. You can do your artistic routines and they lap it up. I’m better than that.”

Viktor raises an eyebrow. “Quads don’t make a program, Yura.”

“No, they get you _points_! And points get you the podium! Are you an idiot!”

“Anyone can do a quad with enough practice.”

Yuri sticks his tongue out through his lips. He bites down with just the slightest pressure, then withdraws his tongue. “I know.” He skates away, into a perfectly executed quad toe, then circles back. Looks at Viktor, half-smug, half-curious.

“What’s the music for your free skate?”

Viktor tells him.

“That old opera? Ew.” Yuri gets his phone out and listens to it on Spotify, his eyes narrowed, bright. “It’s so –” He bites his lip. “Why not the duet? That’s not as pathetic.”

“This one’s more suited to my theme this season.”

“I can’t believe you made fun of the song I wanted,” Yuri grumbles. “Just because this one’s in Italian doesn’t make it any less of a whiny song about not being loved back.”

There must be something in Viktor’s expression, because Yuri takes a step back, considering, before the scorn comes back into his gaze. “Did you break up with Chris or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He doesn’t have to feign the indifference this time; Yuri’s gone completely, gratifyingly, off on the wrong track.

“I know you guys were fucking.”

“Good job. A keen observation.”

“You were all over each other at literally every competition, it was awful.” Yuri shudders. “That thing on your neck last week? Ugh.”

Viktor arches an eyebrow. “How do you know _that_ was Chris?”

“Who else would be into that exhibitionist crap?”

A point well made, Viktor silently concedes. And it in fact had been Chris; he’d sucked Viktor off in his hotel room, then proceeded to thoroughly take him apart with his fingers. He did like thinking about it. He touches the mark, smearing the badly applied concealer.

Yuri’s eyes widen. “Gross. Are you _fantasizing_ – fuck, stop it.”

“Enough about that, then.”

“Agreed. Now and forever.” Yuri thrusts his hands into his jacket pockets. “Teach me the quad flip. I’m going into it wrong, I think.”

Viktor smiles, tucks his hair behind his ear. Turns himself, easily, back into Viktor Nikiforov, five-time world champion. “Now,” he says. “You’ll want to turn – like this –”

He jumps, to demonstrate, and lands. His hip twinges, so this time he does away with the usual flourish.  

* * *

It’s four a.m.: he can see the numbers, outlined in light, on the bedside table. A full hour before he has to get up. His bladder’s bursting, but the pain-pressure’s moved easily enough, just temporarily, to the margins of his awareness. He doesn’t want to get up, not for anything. Not just now. Every part of his body aches relentlessly; what’s one more?

Yuuri’s side of the bed is empty; he’ll be getting in soon, if Viktor’s worked the time difference out right. He’d gotten an earlier flight, insisted on Viktor not meeting him at the airport. “You have to sleep,” he’d said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Ordinarily, Viktor would have protested, and showed up anyway, Makkachin in tow. Tonight he’d agreed, reluctantly, that he could wait another two hours to see Yuuri again. They’d managed to Skype, but the picture had been grainy and the lighting poor. He’d barely been able to make out anything except Yuuri’s eyes, bright with exhaustion.

Yuuri had said he wanted to talk. He hadn’t said it ominously, _we have to talk_ _–_ no one knew better than he did never to do that – but he’d been serious. “I want to be sure you want this,” he’d said. Infuriating, ridiculous, beautiful. Viktor didn’t want to find out if he was right.

A key scrabbling in the lock: the door opens. Viktor sits up.

“Yuuri!” he calls.

“You should be asleep!” Yuuri says. Viktor takes his coat, wheels his luggage into the living room.

“I slept,” he says. “Do you want me to start a bath?”

Yuuri rubs at his eyes; they’re red-rimmed. His hair is greasy, too-long. He probably hasn’t brushed his teeth in the last twelve hours. “Uh – no, no, I think I just have to get some sleep. Couldn’t sleep much on the plane.”

Viktor kisses him, pulls him against his own body.

“Okay,” he says, and brings Yuuri to their bed. He’s already laid out his pajamas, gently guides Yuuri out of his clothes and into clean ones.

Yuuri kisses him back, nuzzling against him in their bed. In no time at all it’s turned into something else, Yuuri panting softly and grinding against his hip.

“Viktor – oh,” he’s saying, in small, half-swallowed gasps. Viktor can feel Yuuri’s erection against his thigh, pushes back. Touches his collarbone, his shoulder, the back of his thighs. Yuuri rocks into his touch, puts his hands on Viktor’s cock and squeezes.

“Ah,” he says, and now it’s discomfort, not want, that’s burning a line down his side. “Uh – Yuuri – sorry. I’ve got to pee. I – forgot.” He goes, guiltily, and is back as quickly as he’s able.

“Sorry,” he says, sheepish.

Yuuri smiles sleepily up at him. It almost feels like he’s forgiven. He gets back into bed, kissing Yuuri’s neck in apology.

“Do you want to?” Yuuri asks lazily. He’s stopped moving against Viktor, seems intent on slowly tracing a line down Viktor’s jaw and chin.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, just give me a minute.”

“Okay.” Yuuri tucks his head against Viktor’s shoulder, breathes out.

They’re asleep in two minutes.

Viktor wakes with Yuuri’s hair, Yuuri’s gloriously dirty hair, in his mouth; for a moment everything he’s chosen is everything he’s ever wanted. Then the alarm goes off, and Yuuri wakes, moves slowly off and away to get ready.

* * *

At Euros his knee starts acting up; he finishes his short program in first place without incident, but lands two quads badly in the free skate. It isn’t enough to deny him the gold, but people start talking. In the slow-motion replays the brief flash of a reaction is visible on his face the moment he lands. At least it might mean they’ll ask him about something other than his new haircut at the press conference.

Chris corners him in the locker room. Viktor’s sitting on a bench and icing his knee, nudging at the new bruises on his shin.

“I’d have gone shorter,” Chris says, dumping his duffel on the bench next to him. “Dyed the top, maybe.”

“I only had scissors.”

Chris whistles. “Here I thought you’d be too vain to have done it yourself.” He cocks his head, studies Viktor’s hair. “Not bad.”

“They had to fix it the day after,” he confesses.

“I can just imagine Mila and Georgi holding you down, Yuri with the scissors,” Chris laughs. “How’s the knee?”

“Fine.” He looks up, clocks Chris’ raised eyebrow. “An old injury.”

“Well, glad to have you back,” Chris says. “Missed you. It was boring to be the favorite.”

“Happy to relieve you of that burden.”

“Are you?”

Viktor shifts the ice pack, stretches. “What did you think of my free skate?”

“You had them wrapped around your finger. Par for the course.” Chris shrugs. “Did you practice those mournful eyes in a mirror?”

“You noticed, excellent.”

“Use them on the next reporter who asks if you’re retiring.”

The pack’s all water now, a useless flopped-over thing that’s rapidly turning warmer. Viktor tosses it onto the bench, stands. Tests his knee. “Mostly they’re asking whether we’re fucking.”

“Are we?”

“I don’t know, what’s your room number?”

Chris laughs, and tells him.

For old times’ sake he lets Chris fuck him, fast and hard, against his freshly-changed hotel linen. They’re careful with his knee – Viktor doesn’t know why, exactly. He’s got a competition coming up; he’s always got a competition coming up. He can’t even remember what the next one is.

“See you on the podium at Worlds,” Chris says. That, then.

“If we make it,” he says. Chris takes it as a slight he doesn’t mean. It doesn’t matter.

* * *

Yuuri comes to get him after practice; they’re training in different parts of the city, today. Yuuri’s in his dance attire, his hair sticking to his forehead. They shower at the rink. Yuuri steals one of his spare t-shirts, and he borrows Yuuri’s travel shampoo. He steps gingerly out of the shower – he’d landed one too many quads and his tailbone’s feeling it, but at least it isn’t his knee. The pain's somehow much worse remembered than it is new.

It’s a short walk to Viktor’s apartment. Yuuri’s taking them on a longer route, but he’s walking slowly, deliberately matching himself to Viktor’s pace.

“You’re tired,” he says. His hand comes up, pushes Viktor’s fringe aside.

“Yeah, Yakov –” he starts, but can’t remember what he means to say. “We had to rush a bit, with the new music.”

Yuuri looks at him. “No, I mean – Viktor. You’re tired. You don’t – are you enjoying this? At all?”

Viktor looks at him as if he’s insane. “Are you?”

“I don’t mean all the time, I don’t mean when you’ve done the same thing twenty-five times in a row and there’s still someone standing there saying _again, again, that wasn’t good enough_. I mean – do you still love it, under all that? After all that?”

He’s about to scoff, say _yes, of course, I –_ but he can’t, not if he thinks about it. He bites his lip, forces himself not to shrug, because Yuuri deserves better than that. “I – don’t know how to tell,” he says, finally.

A hand on his shoulder, steadying him. “Viktor,” Yuuri’s saying softly, “I can tell, for myself, because I’d choose it again. It’s more of a language than – than words are, sometimes.”

Viktor closes his eyes. Yuuri’s hand is still, warm, against his skin, even through his shirt.  “I’m sorry,” he says, “I know I said –” He lets himself twist the ring on his finger, makes it dig into the skin until it hurts. “I understand if you change your mind, too.”

“I haven’t,” Yuuri says. “I won’t.” His hand goes to Viktor’s, squeezing it gently. “I told you, I’d choose it again, and you – you I can never stop choosing. Will you look at me?”

Viktor does, trembling. Is it the cold? Yuuri’s t-shirt is just as thin, he thinks. “Are you cold?”

“What?” Yuuri gives a half-laugh. “No, I’m fine. You’re –” He’s rummaging in his backpack, bringing out his team jacket and coaxing Viktor into it. He zips it up to the chin, pats Viktor on the head, then immediately looks embarrassed.

They walk on. It’s silent, for a while. They go through the park; there’s the distant yelling of children playing catch, the stone path against their feet.

“You have time,” Yuuri tells him. “You’ll always have time.”

“I know,” Viktor says, and is immediately full of childish joy that he’s said something true.

* * *

In this dream, he comes to a vast wall of ice. He isn’t sure who built it, or why. He thinks it might be him, but he doesn’t remember that part. Each night he’s walking to it, through a maze or a forest or, once (bizarrely) the sea; when he reaches it he can almost hear a humming from the other side.

He reaches out to touch the wall, as he always must. This time, though, it’s cold – there’s give, as the top layer melts, then re-freezes against the tip of his finger.

“What are your plans for your big comeback this season?”

The flash of a camera. He ought to be used to it, he thinks, but he never will be.

He pauses, leans into the mic. This time he remembers to smile. “I’m not sure yet,” he says, “but I promise it’ll be something to watch.”

* * *

_Coda_

Yuri, in a fit of arrogance so immense even Viktor has to grudgingly admit himself impressed, has chosen the music for his exhibition skate. He hasn’t yet settled on anything for his free skate, and is toying with a Kanye West remix for his short program. Viktor’s choreographing his free skate, so Yuri’ll probably have to be strong-armed into another classical piece.

“No opera, or I’m skating for Kazakhstan,” Yuri’d told him.

Yakov had _exploded_ at the mere suggestion of defection, and gone on for an hour about ingratitude and national pride and that fucking new boyfriend, what was that hair, even, wasn’t it suspiciously like that Leroy kid’s?

“Go outside for once, Yakov, every second guy has that pineapple asshole haircut,” Mila tells him sweetly, slapping Yuri on the back.

“How _dare_ you, it’s a perfectly fine –” Yuri had spluttered, before regaining his dignity and turning a remarkable shade of eggplant. “Whatever.”

He skates over to Viktor, eyes him warily. “Not you too.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Viktor gives Yuri his most cheerful smile, the one that reaches all the way to his eyes. Yuri snorts.

“Where’s Katsuki?”

“Katsuki was getting coffee,” Yuuri says, materializing behind them.

Yuri jumps. _What the fuck_ , he hisses. “Don’t you have your own program to practice?”

“Viktor wanted help with your step sequence,” Yuuri says, pressing a cup into Viktor’s gloved hand.

“No food on the ice,” Yuri says, then: “Give me some.”

He regrets that later, when Viktor has him practicing spins, can probably feel every ounce of the liquid swirling up against his insides. They do the sequence side by side, Yuuri watching from behind the boards.

“Again,” Viktor says. “Your hands are –” He reaches out to adjust them, and Yuri lets him.

They do it again, and again, until Yuuri calls for a break and Viktor leans over, panting, braces his hands on the boards. Yuri’s beginning to tire, too, but he’s trying his best not to show it, leaning his weight on one leg and curling his hands in the pockets of his team jacket. For a moment, Viktor thinks, he looks almost – _oh_.

“Yura,” he says. “Good work.”

“I know,” Yuri says. A little suspiciously, he adds, “Thanks. I guess.”

“I just – do you like this? Enjoy it?”

“What, being coached by you? Angling for praise already?”

“I mean skating. If you didn’t – couldn’t – win, would you still want to do it?”

Yuri scoffs, trying – badly – to hide his surprise. “I – it’s like breathing. I can’t not.” He looks at Viktor, as if he isn’t sure how sincerely he means the question. “I like winning. And I like skating. Who wouldn’t?”

Viktor holds his gaze. “It’s not a test,” he says.

“It’s the only thing I’m sure I want,” Yuri says, and then immediately seems angry at himself for having said it. He scuffs his left skate.

“As long as you’re sure,” Viktor says.

Yuri narrows his eyes at him. “Yeah,” he says. “Demonstrate that part with the sit spin again?”

Viktor does. This close to the ice, it's almost as if he can make a real mark in it.

* * *

And if it happens that you cannot  
go on or turn back  
and you find yourself  
where you will be at the end,  
tell yourself  
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs  
that you love what you are.

– “Lines for Winter”, Mark Strand

   
I refuse these givens     the splitting  
between love and action       I am choosing  
not to suffer uselessly

– “Splittings”, Adrienne Rich

 

**Author's Note:**

> a note about structure: the whole thing's a nonlinear narrative, but i'm hoping the penny doesn't drop until the bit where yurio asks viktor about his music. i am on the fence about whether this obnoxious narrative trick is working, or just annoying - comments welcome!
> 
> \--
> 
> thanks to @lyeon for pointing out that otabek and jj essentially have the same hair, ilu
> 
> edit: a huge thank you to @radialarch and @Runespoor for pointing out my fuckups on competition names! everyone pretend they didn't see that, thx


End file.
